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Back to the Feature: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Oh boy, what a time to watch a movie about American jingoism.
On its release in 1942, Yankee Doodle Dandy was an enormous hit and went on to win several Academy Awards, including Best Actor for its star James Cagney. And while the movie is reasonably good and Cagney’s performance certainly has its merits, the mixture of subject and timing counts for a lot of its classic movie status and its reputation. A movie about an emphatically patriotic American at a time of extremely high pro-American sentiment in the earliest days of the nation’s entry into the Second World War, it’s little wonder it caught on with the public so well. Parts of the movie are outright propaganda that couldn’t have been designed better by Uncle Sam himself -naturally the director here was Hungarian immigrant Michael Curtiz, who just four days before the première of Yankee Doodle Dandy, began production on what would be another immediately relevant cinema classic, Casablanca.
But it is interesting to get a sense of that fervour, especially from this vantage point, of what it communicated of American self-image both as a national and individual identity -especially as most of it is set in a less overtly patriotic period of time prior to the outbreak of the war (and that incidentally avoids dealing with the Great Depression).
It’s lead character is not a solider or a politician or a statesman of any kind, who you might see these traits more naturally fitting. It is the story of George M. Cohan, arguably the most important figure in the early history of Broadway. In a framing device where he is essentially interviewed by then-sitting President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he relates his life story growing up in a family of vaudeville entertainers, "The Four Cohans", before breaking out on his own as a song and dance man, writing, producing, and performing several musicals on Broadway in the early years of the twentieth century. These included "Yankee Doodle Boy" and "Over There", vaguely familiar tunes now that the movie assures you were household hits back in the day. Often, his songs and shows touched on themes of American pride and patriotism, making him into something of a national hero by the film's end.
The poster for the movie almost says more than the movie itself, depicting Cohan in a red, white, and blue hat saluting under an American flag flanking the title. Essentially he is framed as an Uncle Sam figure, not only the "Man Who Owned Broadway" as he was known at one time, but an entertainment symbol of America, joyously singing as he salutes the flag and encouraging onlookers to do the same. The film was in production prior to the U.S. entry into the war and Cohan himself was not tangibly involved in anything to do with it -he died mere months after Yankee Doodle Dandy was released. But his image, and the significance of his work to the American spirit going into the war, was too useful for exploitation. I wouldn't be surprised if the title was chosen for that reason too.
We don’t get much an idea of what Cohan’s musicals were really about -the film is more concerned with individual songs the musicals were built around, and we mostly just see snippets of the shows being performed where those numbers are relevant. He appears to be a jockey in one, a Union soldier in another. These sequences are the heart of the movie, essentially a cavalcade of Broadway numbers as performed with all the trappings of the stage compiled together between various glimpses of Cohan’s life writing and attempting to sell songs -an American Dream narrative that casually overlooks the family performance history that clearly played a role in Cohan’s eventual success.
These sequences also exist as (literal) platforms for Cagney’s dancing talents. Cagney wasn’t much of a fan of Cohan, and Cohan himself wanted Fred Astaire, but the part was an unmissable opportunity to break out of the typecasting he was enduring by the early 1940s. He was essentially the face of the American gangster genre -a good fit- but the pulpy crime film wasn’t much respected in those days by the Hollywood mainstream. And Cagney was in fact a trained and highly capable dancer, and yearned to show off those talents. He was essentially a 1940s Hugh Jackman in this regard, valued for a rigid tough guy genre he made waves in while his performance passions lied in more traditional, expressive forms. You can’t help but feel happy for the guy finally getting the chance at that shot with this movie and going on to win the Oscar for it. It’s not an especially interesting performance, but Cagney certainly keeps the movie entertaining through his showman skills, performing each of the song and dance sequences, some with fairly elaborate choreography, with gusto. Famously, he improvised a little tap dancing routine near the end of the movie -when Cohan leaves his meeting with the President at the White House, skipping and tapping his way down the stairs in a manner that could have risked injury if not done right. He really was that good on his feet!
There are fun bits to his performance here and there -the way he plays as an older man the typical resistance to the younger generation’s music while they don’t know the classics; of course this younger generation’s wild music is stuff like the Charleston which is unintentionally hilarious. There are also bits that are not at all fun, but perfectly reflective of both Cohan and the movie’s singularly American identity. For example, it is perversely right that a movie this American would feature the very first distinctly American art form: the minstrel show. It is quite sobering not only to see the blackface but to see minstrel shows discussed with such a casual air as a legitimate natural part of vaudeville entertainment.
In telling the story of Cohan's life the film obviously makes some adjustments -his multiple marriages fused into one of course to paint him off as a more upstanding figure. And of course in true biopic fashion, all of his biggest successes come in spontaneous flashes of inspiration. Scenes like his tap-dancing at the recruitment office when he tries to enlist to join the war in 1917, or all of the various figures putting him down as someone who can't possibly make it on his own, are just exquisite examples of Hollywood fiction. Parts of his patriotism may be exaggerated too, but the film doesn't engage with it too much on a thematic level -U.S. hegemony is presented as just the topic he is instinctively inclined towards, no further interrogation needed. That may be the more insidious track of the way this film deals with U.S. jingoism.
Yet at the same time, Yankee Doodle Dandy, as a Hollywood movie, also reveres Cohan as an artist. At times it even trumps his identity as an American. While it may not be as interested in the creative process behind his work -his pieces seem to appear fully formed- his performances are on display with great acclaim. The spectacle of his shows and his singing and footwork is as important as anything to the image he makes of himself. And it is always portrayed as his important life’s work.This is a movie that treats art as a noble pursuit -at the end of it the President himself tells Cohan that the songs he wrote made as much a difference to the First World War effort as anything more commonly articulated; and that sentiment would not be found in any work with the same propagandic leanings today -hell, an American nationalist crowd of 2024 would scoff at their avatar being a man who dances. But that was who Cohan was, and this movie was more than happy to honour that as his great means of expression. He attempts to enlist but is turned away for a health reason, and yet there he is at the end of the movie marching in a military parade that is singing his own song -completely irrespective of him being there. Yankee Doodle Dandy believes in the mighty inspirational power of art. Isn’t that interesting?
Interesting is the word more than good, but Yankee Doodle Dandy isn’t bad -it’s show sequences are aptly produced and you can feel Cagney relishing in the freedom the performance allows him. The movie re-popularized Cohan and his work just in time for the Second World War -in fact Michael Curtiz, with the one-two punch of this and Casablanca, could well have sat in Cohan’s place at the Oval Office with the very same President commending him for the effect of his own art on the war effort. Perhaps this movie still has some of its power in the U.S. -though I imagine it has to be dwindling a little by this point. It’s romanticization is too pleasant, the patriot spirit it represents not nearly cruel enough to fit the bill today. It is a document of the history of America’s self-image, more striking for its distance than not.

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